


say the words (or let me say them for you)

by speccygeekgrrl



Series: skin-deep, or deeper [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Season/Series 01-02 Hiatus, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 19:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2663306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When your soulmate is born, the first words they will ever say to you appear on your skin, in their handwriting, like a tattoo. The words fade like scars when a soulmate dies. But if you're the one who dies and is revived, you're wiped clean and branded anew-- perhaps in unexpected ways.</p>
<p>Assessment, realignment, incremental improvement, and revelations unwelcome and even more unwelcome. Jemma knows what she has to do, even if neither of them wants her to do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. words lost

**Author's Note:**

> So I realize it took a really long time to finish this story... but this story is also considerably longer than the first two, long enough that I thought it should be chaptered. So.... I hope the length doesn't put anyone off, and I hope the additional pairing tease doesn't put anyone off-- but I should let you know now that I'm aiming towards a FitzMackSimmons endgame here (or I guess MackFitzSimmons, but it just feels wrong not to have Fitz's name first in a portmanteau pairing name, doesn't it?) so if that bothers you, I sincerely apologize, but I CAN'T STAND MY FEELINGS and I must inflict them on the world. Anyways, I'm hoping to have this series wrapped up by the end of the year, and hopefully by saying that in public I'll actually adhere to it!

The process of assessing Fitz's damage isn't a quick one, but certain things are almost immediately apparent. His fine motor skills have gone quite literally shaky, fingers clumsy on a pen or a pair of pliers, the instrument as likely to fall from his grip as to be retained. Even operating a tablet is as much luck as skill at this point, trembling fingertips none too accurate at his usual settings, only a little better when adjusted for accessibility. It doesn't take long for frustration to set in, for him to set his hands flat on the table where they can't shake.

Worse than the shaking is the vocabulary loss. For every sentence he finishes, three trail into "um" and a hand circling in the air. It seems random, what words he loses-- technical ones go missing, but so do common ones, even prepositions, even the name of the agent giving him the assessment. When he pauses with his mouth open, searching for Simmons's name, and finally manages "Jemma" instead of the name he was going for, that's when he shuts down entirely, refusing to answer any more questions, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. 

"We'll work on it," Simmons tells him when he haltingly tells her what happened, arms still crossed, eyes lowered. "You've only just come out of a coma. You need to get your body used to moving again." 

"Yeah, but that's only half of it," Fitz says, "It's the words..." He looks pained when he confesses, "Your name, even."

"You know who I am," she says, her hand settling on his shoulder. "My name was the first thing you said when you came to. I'm not afraid of you forgetting me, Fitz."

"Never," he swears. "I'd forget myself first. Though that's a... a, um, it could..."

"It's a possibility," she says, shaking her head. "No, it isn't. The damage is done, it won't get worse. You're Leopold Fitz, you won't forget that, and even if you can't remember one or another of my names sometimes, you'll remember who I am to you. I don't mind if you call me Jemma or Simmons or if you don't call me anything at all. The word doesn't matter as long as you know about us."

"You're my soulmate," he says, "my lab partner, my best friend, my... Jemma." His hand curls around her elbow, palm covering her soulmark through her sweater, and she smiles at him, hardly noticing the steadiness of his grip. "I know."

"That's a good place to start, isn't it?" He nods, slowly, and presses his forehead to hers.

They're comfortable in each other's space, always have been, but this is new. Before, Jemma's hand around his wrist was familiar, but he'd never dared to touch the mark at her hip. Standing here with their hands on each other's new marks, there's a tension that wasn't there before, a weight of possibility now that they've removed the qualifier "platonic" from the word soulmate. Her breath is sweet against his cheek, and he knows the only thing keeping them from a kiss is his fear that he doesn't deserve it, though he knows now that she won't rebuff him. He still can't quite get himself to close that last couple of inches, frozen looking at the fans of her lashes on her cheeks.

"Oh, honestly," she whispers, and tugs his shoulder, and at first it's just an awkward smushing of lips before she purses hers around his lower lip and suddenly it's a real kiss, the taste of her green tea chapstick imprinting itself on his tattered brain with the first touch of his tongue. The hand not on her soulmark comes up to cradle her cheek, and she sighs into his mouth, her thumb rubbing back and forth along his collarbone and the words printed on his skin there. Their kisses are clumsy, all trial and error and correction, a give-and-take like their rapid-fire banter across the lab table, a conversation with no sound at all. She gets the last word in by nipping at his lip before pulling back.

They've seen each other all across the emotional spectrum, from despondent to overjoyed, but they've not seen each other this way before: flushed cheeks, reddened lips, eyes dilated dark, still close enough to feel the other's rapid breath on their own skin. It’s overwhelming; he doesn’t know what to do now.

"Jemma, you're... you look..." He almost swears for lack of the word, but she just smiles up at him.

"Thank you," she says, not needing to hear the word to know what he means. He smiles faintly-- she hasn't seen him with a full smile in far too long, and who knows when she'll see it next-- and gives her elbow a gentle squeeze before releasing her. She reaches up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear and smiles back, letting him reassert a little space. "Did they give you a physical therapy regimen to follow?"

"No, not yet. Tomorrow, they said. Have to uh, they have to..."

"Well, of course it'll take more direct assessment to figure out what the best exercises for you will be, but they didn't suggest anything for today?"

"I left in a hurry," he says, looking down at his hands and biting his lip. "Couldn't stand it. Poking at me like--" 

"Like a lab specimen," she murmurs, "oh, you know you aren't, don't you? You're a patient, not a petri dish. Although you've always been an awful patient. Remember back at the academy when you got the flu?"

"When _you_ gave me the flu," he says, pointing a shaky finger at her. "Stealing my... my cup." 

"That hideous mug," she agrees, "but I told you I was taking your tea and you took it back even though I had a fever already, even though I _told_ you I was contagious--"

"It was _my_ tea! You have no respect for--"

"Contagion protocols, oh, will you _ever_ get over that cat liver? It was only a small liver! It wasn't even touching your lunch!"

"That's not the point," he says mulishly, and she shakes her head, smiling.

"No. The point is you're an awful patient, as I found out when I nursed you through the flu-- that I gave you, yes! I felt beholden. And you were so pathetic."

"Is that what you think?" he asks, suddenly very still. "That you're beholden? That I'm pathetic?"

" _No_ , that's not-- you are _not_ pathetic. That's not what I think at all." He won't look at her until she takes him by the shoulders and gives him a little shake. "Fitz. _Leo_. That's not what I meant. The way you acted as a flu-stricken teenager was... like an ill puppy. Temperamental but adorable. This is different."

"Is it really?" Of all the things for him to get stubborn about... "You knew I'd get... uh..."

"Better?"

"Better, yes, from the flu, but I might not get better from this!" He runs a hand through his hair, holds onto his head like he could put whatever's gone missing back into place if he just pushed hard enough. "How long will you put up with me being, being… being an awful patient, Jemma?"

"As long as it takes," she says, reaching up to pull his hand down, to clasp it between her own. "Don't be so pessimistic. It's not even been a whole day since you woke up, and you're already resigning yourself to this condition before you even start trying to make it better. It will get better, you know it will."

"Do I, though?" 

" _Yes_. And it doesn't matter how long it takes, you know. Whatever you're afraid I'm going to do, I'm not going to do it." Her hand slides to his wrist, the familiar way she used to cover his soulmark when it circled the delicate bones and crossed the blue veins there, a comforting touch she's given him a thousand times before. "I told you we'll figure this out, and that's what I meant."

"We will," he says, sounding like he's trying to convince himself, and then again more firmly, "we will." But when he pulls her into his arms and buries his nose in her hair, it's just as much to get her to stop looking at him with that careful expression as it is for the sake of holding her.


	2. words withheld

The physical therapist gives him a red rubber ball to squeeze. It smells like a pencil eraser and he can't quite grip it hard enough, and he hates it immediately. "Just keep doing it and your grasp will improve," the therapist tells him, and he rolls it between his palms, scowling, and slips it into his pocket as soon as she lets him leave, a sheet of exercises in one hand and a string of invective slipping through his mind like water through a sieve, concepts without the attached words to voice his irritation.

Jemma's in the lab, a look of deep concentration on her face as she stares down at her tablet screen too intently to realize he's come in. He's not exactly quiet, but she doesn't react until he's almost at her shoulder, and as soon as she registers his presence she clutches the tablet to her chest furtively. "Fitz! How did it go? What did the therapist say?"

"Alright, I suppose," he says, pulling the stupid ball out of his pocket. "Got this, and this." She takes the sheet from his hand, scanning the list and nodding when she hands it back. "What's up?" he asks, gesturing at the tablet, and he doesn't even need to know her as well as he does to know she's lying when she chirps "Nothing!" in a falsely bright tone. His hurt shows clear on his face, and she wavers visibly.

"Just something Coulson wants me to consider," she says, "an assignment, it's-- it's not important. Hang on a sec..." She rummages in a desk drawer and offers him something from a closed hand. "Here, I thought you might be able to use this."

It's another rubber ball, but it looks like a monkey's head. He holds it on his open palm until his hand trembles too badly, but he manages to keep hold of it when his fingers close, and her smile in response to his is orders of magnitude brighter. It doesn't have that memory-dredging eraser smell, either. He leaves the red ball on the lab table and starts squeezing the monkey ball, trying to bridge the gap between his mind saying _tightly_ and his fingers not doing a whole lot of anything he wants them to do. "Thanks, Jemma," he says, and when she kisses his cheek that knocks the last of the hurt, disincluded feeling he has clean out of his head for a moment.

"You're welcome. Have you eaten? I'm starving. Come to lunch with me," she says, locking the drawer she put the tablet in before sliding her arm through his, and he can't do anything but go with her, even though he ate before his appointment. He shifts the ball to his free hand, squeezing it every few seconds as she whisks him through the hallways of the Playground.

 

\---

 

It's important, of course. Coulson's email gnaws at her while she laughs at Fitz stealing her fries, the thought of infiltrating Hydra in deep cover as terrifying and repugnant as the separate thought of leaving Fitz alone when she's only just promised him she'll stay by his side. As of this moment, the mission is a strongly worded suggestion, but she knows it's only a brief matter of time before it becomes actual orders, before "consider" becomes "prepare for," before "best-qualified" becomes "agent assigned." She doesn't know what's making her feel more sick at heart: the mission looming in the not-too-distant future, or the fact that she's almost grateful that Fitz is too damaged to realize that something is very much not all right with her.

She just needs time to figure out how to tell him that the call of duty supersedes even his handwriting marked in her skin. They're both agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., called to do the right thing even now when it seems the whole world is poised against them, they've both put their lives on the line under dangerous orders, but this order in specific is so huge, so daunting, so hurtful that she can't think it through except coming at it from the sides. S.H.I.E.L.D. needs a scientist in Hydra, needs someone to keep a weather eye on the ever-advancing threats Hydra can bring to bear against the entire world, and she's uniquely qualified to rise through the ranks if she can keep her cover intact.

_I need to do this to keep you safe too,_ she thinks, watching Fitz roll the monkey ball between his fingers until it slips and bounces on the table. _You'd do it if our positions were reversed, wouldn't you?_ He would have, she knows, before, but he can’t do it now, not like this. She’s got to do it because she’s the only one who can.

“Jemma?” he says, waving a hand in front of her face, and she looks up sharply. “You’re a bit, uh, where’d you go?”

“Preoccupied,” she fills in, and he nods. “I’m sorry, Fitz, there’s a lot on my mind right now.”

“Yeah, I figured that when I said your name three times.” He frowns, reaching across the table to touch her hand. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” she says, and he gives her a long searching look before accepting that answer. “Really, there’s just so much going on. The labs are swamped. So many scientists have gone over to Hydra and there’s no way of knowing which of their projects Hydra might be developing now.” 

“Could be anything,” he agrees, “At least not the… the… the one that’s ours, you know.”

“The Night-Night Gun? No, that was all us. And it’s not really Hydra’s style, is it? Non-lethal, I mean.” The thought sends another cold wave down her spine. Certainly they’d killed many and more of the people who resisted when they emerged from the shadows. But the whispers of what they do to the ones they take alive is even more chilling. She’s honestly not sure which fate would be worse if they caught her. 

She knows she’s a terrible liar; she has to stop thinking about this or Fitz will never believe that she’s okay. She stands abruptly, collecting her plate, and he fumbles for a second with the ball before he grabs it and tucks it in his pocket. His hand is chilly in hers when she takes it as they walk back to the lab, and even though it’s an absentminded action when she chafes his hand between hers, the way he looks at her when she does it makes her realize that even if she wasn’t thinking it through, he is. 

_How can I leave him?_ she thinks. _How can I stay? I can’t abandon him any more than I can abandon my duty._

“Jemma?” he says again, quietly, fingers flexing between hers. “Are you really--?”

“I’m okay,” she says, “Come on and let me show you what I’ve been working on in the past few weeks.” She tugs him along, not looking back at him, biting the cheek he can’t see to bring her expression back under control.


	3. words found

Eleven days later, and Fitz seems to be improving, but only slightly, and only with Jemma around. He carries the monkey ball everywhere, constantly trying to strengthen his grip, and he hangs around the lab a lot, letting Jemma tell him everything about what crosses her desk, but he says little to her and even less to everyone else. At least he can finish sentences when talking to her, sometimes-- he almost never manages a complete one with anyone else, and the more she thinks about how many she finishes for him, the more she realizes that he won’t make substantial progress as long as she’s around. It hurts to come to terms with, but it makes a hard decision a little less hard, and she accepted the mission a week after it was offered to her, while it was still her decision and not an order.

That was five days ago, and she still hasn’t worked out how to tell Fitz, the words drying up inside her every time he looks at her with that terrifying level of blatant adoration in his blue eyes. She doesn’t know if he realizes she’s holding him back from making progress, and she doesn’t know if he would send her away if he did know. She doesn’t think he would, and that worries her almost as much as she worries about what will happen to him after she goes.

At lunch on Monday, his grip fails while he has a can of soda in his hand, and the splashback goes all over the front of his pale blue sweater. “Damn my hand,” he curses, and she hands him a couple of napkins to blot at it.

“Come on, if you change it we can rinse it out before it stains,” she says, and she follows him to his quarters, listening to him quietly swearing most of the way there. 

“Bloody useless,” he finishes as he punches in the code, “I’m so tired of being so bloody useless.”

“You aren’t, Fitz,” she says, touching his shoulder as she follows him in. “You’re getting better, you can’t give up.”

“Aren’t I?” He rummages through a drawer, keeping his back to her as he peels the wet sweater off.

"What's this?" Jemma asks, and he pauses with his sweater half-off, arms lifted above his head.

"What's what?" She touches the small of his back, her hand warm on his skin, and he finishes taking his sweater off before reaching back as well. "What is it? Did I get, uh, did I, when I leaned back into that, uh, did it...?"

"It's not a bruise," she says quietly, and her fingertip traces a series of lines across his lower back. "It's a soulmark."

"A-- no, it isn't, my soulmark is up here," he says, touching his shoulder, "Can't be."

"It can't possibly be anything else," she argues, "You'd know if someone had written on you, and it's..." She licks her thumb and rubs at the writing. "No, it's definitely a soulmark. Are you sure you've only ever had one?"

"I think I'd know if I had another!" He cranes his head over his shoulder, brows drawn together in consternation. "What's it say? Do you know the handwriting?"

"It's not familiar," she says, and bends at the waist to take a closer look. "Messy writing. Blocky. It says..." She trails off, making a thoughtful sound, and Fitz waves a hand back at her.

"What? Is it bad? What is it?"

"It says, 'Cloaking, in all its glory. You know, you weren't that far off. Check out the transmitter coil.'" She pauses, and he hears a click, and then she holds up her phone to show him the mark written across his spine. "Another engineer?"

"Could be," he says, taking the phone from her. "That doesn't look, uh, that writing, it's not very, uh..." He waves one hand, trying to draw the word out, finally coming up with, "girly?"

"Feminine," she says, "No, it doesn't, does it?" She tugs his shirt tail down, circling around him. "Is that... unwelcome?"

"It's a bit unexpected!" His hand covers his shoulder reflexively, and he looks a little lost. "I only thought you were the one, you know? You _were_ the only one..."

"Things have changed," she says, reaching out to cover his hand with hers. "The day we went under... the whole world changed."

"Yeah, I was there," he says dryly, and she clicks her tongue at him. "I've changed," he adds, sadder, "I didn't realize I'd changed that much."

"You're still my Fitz," she says, stepping in to slide her arms around his waist. "That'll be true no matter what happens." He rests his cheek against her hair, and she adds, "It looks like you'll get a look at cloaking tech, at least."

"I'm working on that now, though," he says, "I'm close, I know I am."

"Well, that's what they'll tell you. Maybe it's not that far off. You might meet them soon."

"Yeah, but I don't need... I mean, I've got you... don't need anyone else." She bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood, and takes half a step back so she can look up at him.

"About that... Fitz, I'm being given a new assignment." He blinks at her like the words don't make sense, and she steels herself. "I'm being sent undercover. Coulson wants me to leave on Wednesday."

"But that's the day after.... that's two days from now!" She nods miserably, and for a long moment he just stares at her, mouth hanging open, before he manages to say, "Jemma, what the _hell_?"

"I didn't know how to tell you," she whispers, and he shakes his head.

"So you just didn't? That's fucked!" He grabs her wrists, and she doesn't know if his loose grip is out of gentleness or simply because he can't hold any tighter. "Where are you going?"

"To infiltrate Hydra," she says, and he gasps.

"Are you _mad_? You can't-- you-- you're--" He winces, shakes her wrists and keeps stammering until he spits out, "You'll be killed!"

"I will not," she says, "I'm a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, I have to go where I'm needed, and we desperately need someone inside Hydra right now. I'll be in the labs, doing science, not sneaking about spying and, and getting myself into trouble..."

"But you will be spying," he says, "you'll be... Jemma, what if you don't... what if things... damn it!" He clutches his head, closing his eyes. "It could go wrong," he says after a long moment. "You could go and not come back."

"Of course I'll come back," she says placatingly, touching his shoulder, but he shakes her touch off and starts pacing, not looking at her. "Fitz, please, it's not like I _want_ to go do this."

“But you are. You’re going.” There’s not much room for him to pace, even less when he refuses to turn and look at her, but he manages to go back and forth a couple of times before she catches him by the waist and presses her cheek to the back of his shoulder.

“Fitz. Will you listen to me?” He goes still, which is something, and she feels him breathe, measures the length of his breaths, trying not to think about how he gave up breathing for her and that’s what’s brought them to this point. “I have to do this. There’s no one who can do it but me. And if I stay here, you won’t get better. I can’t be your crutch.”

“You’re not my _crutch_ , you’re my _soulmate_ ,” he says, and that’s the first time she’s heard bitterness in his voice when he called her that. “How d’you think I’ll get on without you, Jemma?”

“Better than you’ll get on with me here finishing all your sentences for you,” she says, “I’m holding you back, can’t you see?” 

“No,” he says, simply, and this is an argument she can’t make, a verbal misstep just waiting to happen if she says one wrong thing. He seems to be waiting for her to go on, but she just hugs him a little tighter, waits for the stiffness to melt out of his posture, knowing exactly how stubborn he can be-- but she’s stubborn too, and she can wait him out, and it takes a couple of minutes but finally he heaves a sigh and wraps his arms around hers around his middle. “If you love me, why would you leave me?” he asks, sounding as lost as she’s ever heard him, and it shatters into fragments her already broken heart.

“I have to leave you because I love you,” she whispers, trying for a moment to keep her tears from soaking his shirt before she gives up that sad attempt and buries her face against his shoulder, shivering with suppressed sobs. He stiffens up again, and then he’s turning, pulling her close and holding on tight as she cries. 

“No, no, don’t cry,” he says, “if you cry I’ll cry, and then, then, then…” He stops talking and starts swaying, little side-to-side movements that don’t soothe her at all. “Damn it, Jemma,” he says after a moment, barely audible, and she knows the way he cries, trying so hard not to do it at all, how it hurts all the more when his control breaks, so it comes as a surprise when his chest hitches under her cheek only seconds later and he presses an already-damp cheek to her hair. “I need you,” he says, voice tight, “I need you here, with me.” 

This is unprecedented, both of them reduced to tears at once. Always before there’s been the consoled and the consoler, one of them with a level enough head to bear the other through their pain, or at the worst extreme, there’d been Jemma crying at Fitz’s bedside with his cold hand clasped between hers, but with her tears soaking his shoulder and his dampening her hair, there’s no one to soothe, no one to console, no one to gentle the blow except for themselves-- but, as always, he’s the first thing in her mind and she’s the first in his, and through the pain they each know what’s best for the other to help them through the moment. Her hand steals into his hair, stroking and petting, and his hand rubs a slow path up and down the length of her spine, and eventually there’s a cessation to the tears, the soft hiccups as sobs wind down into ragged breaths and then into deep ones, until they’re simply standing there in each other’s arms, breathing in and out as if they share the same lungs, neither willing to be the first to let go.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “really, truly sorry. But I have to do this.” 

“Tell me it wasn’t your idea,” he pleads, “tell me you didn’t request this assignment.” She stiffens, then leans back, framing his face in her hands and looking him in the eyes.

“These are orders from Director Coulson,” she says clearly. “I’m an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and I have a duty to uphold. I wouldn’t have come up with this, Fitz, believe me. Leaving your side to walk alone into the lion’s den? I’d have to be out of my mind to _ask_ to do this.” He nods, slowly, and she pulls him down to kiss him gently on the lips. “I will come back to you. I will. I don’t know how long I’ll be undercover, but I have you to come back to, so I’ll move heaven and earth to make it back.”

“You can’t promise that,” he says, and she shakes her head.

“I don’t care. I am.” She gives him a shaky smile. “Hydra can't hurt me. You and I are joined by the bonds of love. And you cannot track that, not with a thousand bloodhounds, and you cannot break it, not with a thousand swords.” That startles a laugh out of him, a laugh which becomes a groan.

“Jemma…” He leans his forehead against hers. “I love you. More than anything. Y’know that?”

“I know,” she says, “I do know, and you know I feel the same way about you, don’t you?”

“Could you say it?” he asks, sounding very small, and she kisses him again, and again between every word.

“I. Love. You. Leopold. Fitz.” She gives him a longer kiss, and then adds, “No one knows me like you. And no one knows you like me. We suit each other’s madness like we were fitted for it. I don’t know what I’ll do without you for so long. But we’ll both manage, because we have to, and we’ll have so much to tell each other when we’re back together again.”

“I believe you,” he whispers, and when he kisses her back, he almost convinces her that he means it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah that's a Princess Bride quote and making Jemma say that to Fitz is a PINNACLE OF MY FICWRITING CAREER look at these two nerds in love, awww


End file.
